1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to interactive voice response (IVR) system session management and more particularly to IVR session interruption and resumption methodologies.
2. Description of the Related Art
Biometrics (or biometric authentication) refers to the identification of humans by characteristics or traits of humans. Biometrics has been used in the field of computer science as a form of identification and access control. Biometrics also has been used to identify individuals in groups under surveillance. Biometric identifiers are the distinctive, measurable characteristics used to label and describe individuals and are often categorized as physiological versus behavioral characteristics. As a physiological indicator, the human voice is unique because of the shape of the human vocal cavity and the way the mouth of a humans moves when speaking. Accordingly, in the field of biometrics, a voiceprint can act as tangible representation of the human voice of an individual.
In this regard, a voiceprint is a set of measurable characteristics of a human voice that uniquely identifies an individual. These characteristics, which are based on the physical configuration of a speaker's mouth and throat, can be expressed as a mathematical formula. The term voiceprint, then, applies to a vocal sample recorded by a voiceprint system for that purpose, the derived mathematical formula, and its graphical representation. To enroll in a voiceprint system, a subject generally repeats one or more words or phrases presented by the voiceprint system, or the voiceprint system simply accepts from a subject an extended sample of speech so that the computer can identify the subject no matter the words spoken by the subject.
In the past, voiceprints have been used to authenticate an individual seeking access to a computer program. Additionally, voiceprints have been used within interactive voice response (IVR) systems to route inbound telephone calls within a call center. In this regard, voiceprints have been incorporated into the routing infrastructure of IVR so as to route calls from high priority individuals to faster responding call queues while other calls are routed to general response call queues. IVR systems also have incorporated voiceprints to locate telecommunications logs relating to a telephone call placed by a particular caller.
Yet, IVR systems favor other less personal forms of data to effectively route calls and manage IVR systems. In particular, IVR systems favor device dependent data in order to route calls—namely caller identification associated with automatic number identification (ANI). Notwithstanding, device dependent data cannot account for the caller who utilizes multiple different communications devices to access an IVR system. Rather, device dependent data can only process calls in an IVR system according to the device utilized by the caller rather than the identity of the caller him or herself.